


and for once you let go

by returntosaturn



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: College, Fluff, Future Fic, M/M, NYU - Freeform, New York City, Original Character(s), Well that escalated quickly, but will is happy so you should definitely read it, happy Will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-05 04:54:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12787407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/returntosaturn/pseuds/returntosaturn
Summary: “Yes.” Will nods, more affirmatively, and suddenly there’s a new sort of feeling. It’s entirely different. Its...light. It’s relief. It’s thrilling. He wants more of it.





	and for once you let go

_ New York City, October 1989 _

-

The steely growl of  _ The Clash _ ’s guitar solo drowns out the noise of the cafe.

When he’d arrived, there had hardly been anyone here. But now, when he glances up from his sketchbook for the first time in a long time, he finds the entire place crowded wall to wall, with baristas and servers learnedly dancing around one another behind the counter to keep up.

He presses his headphones tighter against his ears and goes back to his sketch, filling in the sharp shadows of the grate on knight’s helmet.

It’d been a month and he still didn’t know a single soul in the entire twenty-three square miles of the island. And it was only just recently that he’s considered this to be an issue at all. It’d been perfectly simple to settle into the easy routine of going to classes, studying, scouting out dinner on his own, and then repeating. He really didn’t see anything wrong with it, honestly. After all, he did have at least some form of human interaction in the form of a weekly round of phone calls where the receiver would be passed from his mother, to Eleven, a quick hello from the Chief, and back to his mother. If he could manage to catch one of the guys in their tiny apartment when they weren’t in class, the library, or doing whatever there was to do in Indianapolis, he’d talk with them until either party declared they needed to hang up to study or sleep.

He wasn’t entirely a loner, counting all of that.

It was easier this way. Comfortable. Fine.

_ He _ was fine. Friends, acquaintances, socializing...all of those things got complicated.

Friends meant...explaining, defense mechanisms, keeping in touch, speaking up. All things that he was bad at, all things that made him...tired.

_ “You’re in the greatest city in the world,”  _ Jonathan had said. _ “Its the most exciting part of your life. You could do whatever you want; be whoever you want to be. I’m just saying, you should get out more often!" _

But he was fine. Perfectly fine. Except for the times when the city felt crowded, claustrophobic. And he felt too small in it.

It was fine except for the times when memories—dark, cold, alone—kept him awake at night and “getting some space” wasn’t all his mother had thought it would mean for him.

Fine except for all the time he spent staring out the window, his mind clouded to numbness. Times he wished with everything he had that he was in that crowded Indianapolis apartment with his best friends he hadn’t seen in months, pizza boxes on the floor, textbooks shoved aside for a game board, surrounded by people who understood and didn’t question, didn’t press.

People who didn’t have to learn him all over again; wouldn’t  _ ask questions. _

He hunches his shoulders, curves his hand around his pencil in an attempt to shield his drawing from view under the growing bustle of the cafe. 

“Scuze me?”

He barely hears it over the tail end of  _ Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want. _

When someone’s knuckles rap against the Formica, he jumps in his seat, instinctively clamping his hands over his headphones to tug them down, and looks up at a tall man about his age, backpack hanging from one shoulder, smiling politely. Patiently.

“Ah, sorry, but everywhere else is full. Are you using this chair?” he asks.

Will shakes his head, half expecting the guy to just drag the chair away, off to a table full of other (much more interesting) people, but instead he shuffles the backpack from his narrow shoulders, loops it over the back of the empty chair and sits. 

He twists around, rummaging for something in the outer pockets.

Will blanches, half bewildered, half trying to decipher what was the proper protocol for unannounced New York City table crashing. Was this the norm? Was he supposed to go back to his work? Were they supposed to make conversation?

The man turns back to the table, a leather bound notebook in one hand and a newly sharpened Ticonderoga in the other.

Will looks away, back down to his own work—he’s absolutely staring too much—but they are interrupted once again when a waitress brings over a steaming mug of black coffee. His new guest thanks her quietly and takes a sip. There’s a birthmark just at the edge of his jaw, Will noted, curly dark blonde hair and square shoulders under his wool coat...

“I’m Arthur, by the way.”

Will jolts visibly. Blinking, wide eyed.

“Will...Will...I’m Will,” he sputters.

Arthur smiles over the rim over his coffee cup. “Will. Sorry to just barge into your space… Its kind of the nature of the beast in this town.”

“Yeah,” he says, attempting to be cool, fidgeting at the headphones around his neck, now pumping  _ Under Pressure  _ to no one. 

Arthur’s eyes are green. Green like spring. Shielded behind stylish, round glasses.

Will gives his own smile, grips clammily at the pencil in his hand, and glances back down to his drawing.

Silence lapses for a few minutes, and as he draws Will notices his knight’s stature now just a little too sharp, a little too angled to be natural. He sighs and flips the pencil deftly, hurrying to remedy the mistake. 

“Wow. That’s really cool.”

He glances up, maybe too quickly, judging by Arthur’s delighted grin when he meets his eyes. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to spy. It’s really great. I like it.” He taps his own pencil against the pages of his notebook where it looks like the handwriting is scrawled into verses.

“Thanks.” Will feels his face flush pink.

“Are you a student?”

Will nods. 

“Me too. Well…I can’t draw to save a life, but if anybody wanted to know the distinctions between Russian ballet and Chinese ballet, I’d be your go-to guy.”

“You’re a dancer?”

Arthur nods.

“That’s neat!”  _ God, why was he so lame? _

“Well, it doesn’t pay the bills,” Arthur quipped dryly. Will laughs down at his lap.

“Well neither does drawing, so I guess we’ll be broke together.”

The words are out of his mouth before he time to think on them. To rearrange them into some pattern that didn’t sound...like  _ that.  _ Whatever  _ that  _ was, he is sure it isn’t appropriate. 

Arthur laughs out loud while Will puts extensive mental effort into quelling the fluttering feeling in his chest at the sound.

“So you just moved here?” he asks, taking a sip of his coffee. 

“Is it that obvious?” Will fiddles with his pencil.

“No. But you were sitting all alone in a crowded cafe on a Tuesday morning.”

_ That’s poetic _ , Will thinks. All he can do is smile down at the table top. 

“I like my alone time,” he murmurs after a beat, a poor attempt at a joke because it was surprisingly difficult to make a joke out of the truth. 

“Nothing wrong with that,” Arthur replies, setting down his mug. “Where’d you move from?”

“Indiana,” he answers sheepishly.

“Ah. Probably from some small town where nothing ever happened?”

Will smirks to himself, twists his fingers together under the table. “Yeah. Pretty boring.”

“Well I’d be happy to show you around the city. Maybe...lunch?”

Will’s attention snaps upwards. Arthur was smiling—warm, patient, no pressure—head tilted just at the right angle that let the golden glow of morning glint off his curls. 

Will blinks.

“Uh...I don’t know...Uh…I….”

He’s in eighth grade all over again, at the Snow Ball, the first of his friends to be asked to dance by someone outside of their group.  _ He looks to Mike for help, uncertain, uneasy… _

The Walkman, left running on the table between them, clicks audibly when the tape ends. He clamps a hand over it.

“Um. Ok. Yeah.”

It’s lame.  _ Lame, lame, lame. _

“Yeah?” Arthur asks, almost carefully. 

“Yes.” Will nods, more affirmatively, and suddenly there’s a new sort of feeling. It’s entirely different. Its...light. It’s relief. It’s thrilling. He wants more of it. 

He smiles up at Arthur, who just smiles right back, until he’s blushing all over again and looks back down at his sketchbook, half hiding—thought he knows Arthur can see—half relishing in this feeling he can’t name, but for once not having a description doesn’t feel like a bad thing.

Arthur weaves the way out of the shop, leaving behind a five dollar bill and a half empty cup of coffee. 

They never really get to lunch...not in the traditional sense. It’s freezing. Their breath is visible in the air, swirling like smoke from a dragon’s mouth. The forecast says snow, but they wander Central Park for awhile—he loses track of how long—clutching toasty bagels from a street vendor. He doesn’t know where it comes from, and he’s pretty sure he hasn’t spoken this much to anybody all year. He tells Arthur about Dustin, Lucas, Mike, and Max; Jane—he uses her given name—who has become his kind-of sister and just as close as. Jonathan, his cool older brother who just picked up a job with National Geographic, he and Nancy set to travel to Australia in November. His mom, who’s actually the best, and somehow everything that had been building, bubbling, growing impacted and heavy in his heart and in his mind, just feels gone. 

The feelings he’s gotten used to crowding him, plaguing him every single day since he was thirteen.

It isn’t until they stop just outside the park that he even thinks about it, lets himself feel it. Discovers that it no longer grips him in the way that seemed to hold him still while everything moved on around him. It isn’t even there.

Its replaced by the  _ something  _ he’d felt the first flutters of in the cafe.

Arthur checks his watch and curses, says he has to get off to practice soon.

He gets an idea, and though he’s never given any of his artwork to anyone besides his mom, this just feels right. He tugs the sketch of the armored knight loose from his book, signs and dates it, and then falters just short of passing it over.

He looks up at Arthur, who’s just smiling patiently, and perhaps Will looks a little longer than normal (but how much of this has been normal?) before flipping over the drawing and scrawling his phone number in a lopsided line.

He hesitates, but it's too late to refuse now, and he knows its his own insecurities talking, so he shoves it all aside in favor of this  _ new  _ feeling he can’t name yet.

Arthur is positively beaming when he glances back up and holds the paper out. 

Their fingers brush in the exchange.

That evening, for the first time in a long time, there aren't any nightmares.

**Author's Note:**

> [allscissorsallpaper](http://allscissorsallpaper.tumblr.com) on Tumblr.


End file.
